Ford Health Agenda Will Do More for the Rich, Less for the Rest of Us

Friday, May 18, 2018

(Toronto) Doug Ford has surrounded himself with advocates of two-tier health care, where there is one system for the rich and one system for the rest of us.

This past week, Ford said of Frank Klees: “Frank will play an important role in advising.” Klees twice ran for leader of the Conservative Party on an agenda of breaking down our universal health care system.

Let's break the shackles of the Canada Health Act," - Globe and Mail, July 27th, 2004

"Once we break through the barriers of the Canada Health Act we will actually be strengthening the health-care system” KW record - Jul 16, 2004

“If we set a modest target of simply allowing 10% more capacity to be built by a parallel private system,” Klees says, “it would generate $12 billion in new annual capital and operating investment nationwide, or roughly $4 billion in Ontario. That’s almost three times the investment that the First Ministers will squabble over, generated without any government having to sell anything, tax anything, manage anything or tender anything,” Klees said. Frank Klees Leadership Press Release – Sunday July 12, 2004

Conservative candidate Merilee Fullerton shares Klees’ backwards vision. Doug Ford’s would-be Minister of Health argued for a two-tiered health care system in a 2013 video posted by the Association of American Physician and Surgeons:

Rich Ontarians should be able to use their wealth to secure better, faster healthcare than the rest of us:

“And there’s people that are perfectly capable of paying, would like to pay and, you know, there’s all sorts of options that you could do for pooling, cooperative, types of insurance and yet the government won’t allow that to happen.”

The American system of private healthcare is far superior to Ontario’s universal system of public healthcare:

“I would caution anyone in the U.S. not to adopt the system we have here. We’re trying to change the system we have here...”

His openness to advocates of two-tier health care suggest he will let the rich buy their way to the front of the line, robbing the public system of resources to finance a parallel private system.